So here's a little story to tack on to my reasons for regretting the purchase of my 360.

I'm sitting down to play some Forza 2. I load up my career and start one of the last three races I need to beat the game. It's an endurance race, and for those of you who don't know, the endurance races are a lot of fun but they can take anywhere from about 45 minutes to an hour to complete. I start the race and easily take the lead within the first few laps. I finish the race in first place with nearly the entire field one lap behind me. It was a flawless race and I was having a blast. I won and was waiting to collect my reward when the unthinkable happened. I get an error message that my disc may be scrathced or dirty. At first I was worried. I immediately eject the disc and check it for damage. The 360 has been known to eat game discs. My disc, however, looked fine... brand new in fact. My worry quickly turned to anger when I realized I just sat down and wasted an hour to win a race only to have my 360 give me such a BS error. "What the Hell!?" I think to myself. An hour wasted trying to win a race and some money and perhaps even an acheivement or two (could have used the money to buy the last few cars I needed in some regions).

Now I know it could have been a lot worse. I could have gotten the RROD. I already had that once before, and luckily it was before the 360 hardware failures were a major problem. I got it shipped out and back within a week. I really feel sorry for those of you who had to wait a month or longer. Anyways, the point I am trying to make is that the 360's problems are far too many and far too often and it boggles my mind that Microsoft is still on top. I mean, come on. I paid $400 for this console and I've had 3 games ruined, one hardware failure, many, MANY freezes, and let's not even get started with the recent Xbox Live problems. Each time something like this happens, I regret ever buying the thing. Sure, the games are a blast, but how much fun is it to invest time in a game you really enjoy only to have your console take a crap all over your progress?

It's really a shame too. Forza 2 is one of my favorite racing games.. and I am a man who loves his racing games. I generally keep my racing on consoles as I hate using the keyboard to turn. If I had the money though, I'd throw down $300 on the Logitech G35 racing wheel in a heartbeat and play all my racing games on the PC. Unfortuneatley I don't. I was really considering perchasing the wireless racing wheel for the 360, but now I think I'm going to hold off on everything for that $400 paperweight.

With all the problems, and not just mine as these types of problems are common, I'm now really considering trading in my 360 for a PS3. Hell, if it wasn't for Forza 2 being an exclusive, I may have gotten one at launch. Don't get me wrong, I love the games for 360, and when it works, I love the 360 itself, but I have never had so many problems with any other console, ever. Even my overclocked, poorly cooled PC is more stable.

Let's take a look at the pros and cons of both the 360 and the PS3:

360 - The good

-Great games

-superb graphics

-awesome HD support

-downloadable demos, movies, game content (except for the BS that EA pulls), etc.

-Very user friendly

- The bad

- online community can be quite immature 99.9% of the time. There are cool people out there, but you really gotta have patience to find them

-record breaking errors and failures

-no real action taken towards correcting the wrongs

PS3 - The good

-see 360

-bluetooth capability

-FREE online services (multiplayer gaming included)

-blueray tech.

- The bad

-Game catalogue not as expansive as the 360

- system is quite pricey

-freezes sometimes (not nearly as often as 360 though)

By now you may think I am becoming a "fanboy", but I assure you I'll play anything as long as it's fun. If I really did hate microsoft, I wouldn't play so many PC games either. Anyways, I thought I'd post this to share my story and get some feedback on what other 360 owners think, as well as any PS3 owners. I probably won't trade in my 360 and it may be a while before I can afford a PS3, so in the meantime I'll just suck it up and stick with it.